Miami metro edges past New York City area in federal cost-of-living rankings
New York City has been known as one of the most expensive places to live in the country for a long time, but new data shows a Florida city may have surpassed it.
New data shows that, when looking at the entirety of a metropolitan area, the Miami area is now more expensive overall than the New York area, also known as New York City.
The comparison is between the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach region and the larger New York-Newark-Jersey City region, which includes surrounding communities in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, or BEA, measures the prices that people pay for things like housing, groceries, transportation, health care and other everyday expenses. It combines those costs into a number called a Regional Price Parity, which compares how expensive different parts of the country are to the national average.
The national average is set at 100.
For 2024, the BEA found the following Regional Price Parities:
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach: 114.2New York-Newark-Jersey City: 112.6
This report was released on Feb. 19 of this year, although the data is from 2024. That means prices in the Miami metro area were about 14% higher than the national average, while prices in the New York metro area were about 13% higher.
Housing is one of the biggest reasons why.
Home prices and rents have climbed sharply across South Florida over the past several years.
This does not mean every part of Miami is more expensive than every part of New York City. In fact, many neighborhoods in Manhattan still have much higher housing costs than most of South Florida.
Instead, the data shows that when all everyday expenses are averaged across each metropolitan area, the Miami region now has a slightly higher overall cost of living than the New York region.